1. Field of Invention
This invention is directed to a multimedia search apparatus and methods for searching multimedia content using speaker detection to segment the multimedia content.
2. Description of Related Art
In one known method for speaker identification and verification, Gaussian Mixture Models (GMMs) are used to model the spectral shapes of the speaker's voice. This method is described in "Robust Text-Independent Speaker Identification Using Gaussian Mixture Speaker Models," Douglas A. Reynolds, IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing, vol. 3, no. 1, January 1995 (Reynolds), which is incorporated herein by reference. This method uses Gaussian Mixture Models to verify the identity of a speaker such as when conducting financial transactions. However, the above-described speaker identification and verification method assumes that only one speaker is the source of the audio input for all samples. Thus, this method is only practical for identifying a single speaker. Therefore, there is a need for new technology to provide more reliable speaker detection when more than one speaker may be present in multimedia information.